Sena Başöz & İz Öztat

Zilberman is proud to announce the representation of artists Sena Başöz and İz Öztat.

Sena Başöz (1980, Turkey) is an artist working across many different media whose works investigate healing, seeking ways of interacting with what is considered out of reach and experimentally regenerating what is considered frozen-dead-stale-lost. She focuses on broader definitions of “care” and the practices it entails. 

Her recent solo exhibitions and performances include “Slalom”, Wellcome Collection, London (2022); “Clam”, Matsutake at Librairie Yvon Lambert, Paris (2021); “Astronomical Movements”, Bilsart, Istanbul (2021); “Ars Oblivionis”, Lotsremark Projekte, Basel (2020); A Consolation, Krank Art Gallery, Istanbul (2020); “Hold on Let go”, MO-NO-HA Seongsu, Seoul (2020) and “On Lightness”, DEPO Istanbul (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions such as “There is Nothing Inevitable About Time”, TAVROS, Athens (2022); “This Place”, Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat, Istanbul (2021); “Transitorische Turbulenzen”, Kunstraum Dreiviertel, Bern (2020); “Studio Bosporus”, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018); “Quiet Dialogue”, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum (2018) and “Sharjah Biennial Offsite Exhibition: BAHAR”, Istanbul (2017).

She received her BA in Economics from Boğaziçi University in 2002 and MFA from Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in Film and Video in 2010. She participated in artist residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2017), Atelierhaus Salzamt, Linz (2010) and Delfina Foundation, London (2020-2022).

Sena Başöz’s solo show Possibilities of Healing is on view at Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat in Istanbul, until April 2, 2023.

In her collective and individual artistic practice spanning diverse media defined by her research, İz Öztat (1981, Turkey) explores the persistence of violent histories through forms, materials, space, and language. She responds to absences in official historiography through spectral, intergenerational, and speculative fictions. İz Öztat fabricates the (auto)biography of Zişan (1894–1970), who appears to her as a historical figure, a ghost, and an alter ego. She takes on Zişan’s archives and interprets them through her practice to construct a complex temporality of action that enables the suppressed past to intervene in the increasingly authoritarian present. The values and methodologies driving her practice have been articulated in relation to struggles against the taming of running waters for profit and progress, queer desire, and consensual negotiation of power.

Selected exhibitions include I am Nobody. Are You Nobody Too?, Meşher, Istanbul (2022); The Colony, Schwules Museum, Berlin (2018);  Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); Land without Land, Heidelberger Kunstverein, (2016); Salt Water: A Theory on Thought Forms, 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015); Second Exhibition, Arter, Istanbul (2010). Her academic articles, essays and fictional texts have been published in various media. Öztat participated in artist residency programs in Amman, Berlin, London, Istanbul, Madrid, Mexico City, Oslo, Paris and Yerevan. She lives and works in Istanbul and Berlin.

İz Öztat’s solo exhibition, Underbelly, will take place at Zilberman, Istanbul from February 18 to April 19, 2023.